1912 – 1916 – The Club Grows

The number of amateur operators was increasing daily now, so that the club decided to be of further service to the art by issuing a call list of amateur stations. Through the painstaking efforts of the members, and particularly Frank King and Dr. Hudson, a List was compiled by contacts through the air, since this was the only means of getting calls and addresses. The list was blue-printed and sold to all operators at 10 cents a copy upon application to Frank King. This was the first amateur call book ever issued.

At a regular meeting on January 20th, 1912, the club emblem and a club pin designed by Frank King, were unanimously accepted. The pin as illustrated below, was gold on a black background.

In 1912 the Alexander Wireless Bill was introduced in another attempt to stifle the amateur. This bill purported to do everything that the Depew Bill had failed to accomplish and even more. The Club again took immediate action, killed the bill in committee, and in later years, through the concerted action of its members in the U. S. service after the Armistice, definitely settled the matter.

Now there were crystal detectors, microphone detectors, and even electrolytic detectors. Boys were busily engaged in breaking up chunks of rock in an attempt to find a good piece of carborundum, copper pyrites, or zincite, or groveling on hands and knees diligently searching the floor for the missing piece of Wollaston wire which was always diminutive and hard to find.

These new detectors together with the advance in knowledge enabled the amateur operator to establish quite reliable communication within the city limits and occasionallya superhuman feat such as working Yonkers, a distance of about fifteen miles was accomplished, but for some unknown reason it was impossible to get any signal across to Brooklyn.

The serious nature of the organization thus evidenced, soon attracted the attention of the early radio workers, so that aside from papers prepared by its own members, the Radio Club was soon honored by addresses by such well known radio men as: R. H. Marriott, Dr. A. N. Goldsmith, J. V. L. Hogan, F. Lowenstein, Dr. J. Zenneck, F. Conrad, W. C. White and others, all of whom subsequently became members.

By this time the three-electrode vacuum tube had appeared on the scene. Audions they were called, and cost $5.00 a piece, but every amateur had to have one. So down to the Metropolitan Tower he would go, up to the DeForest Radio Company’s laboratory, leave his five and go home with his most precious possession. Of course the number of identical new circuits and inventions developed by these boys was great, but nevertheless communication was greatly benefited and messages could be sent and received over distances of approximately 50 miles, quite regularly. This marked a great advance in amateur radio.